Morgan Hill
Anniversary’s …
Looking Back
In Time
Written By Mike Monroe
A
nniversaries are certainly special as they offer perspective
and context to look back on what once was and to see
how far we’ve come. I have four interesting anniversary
stories to share with you that are significant in the history of
southern Santa Clara County.
Two hundred years ago, March 11, 1816 to be precise,
Thomas Doak from Boston sailed aboard the American schooner
Albatross and landed at the sleepy harbor of Monterey, Alta
California. He was to become the first American settler in
California, residing for the rest of his life in what is now the
southern outskirts of Gilroy on a portion of the Las Ánimas
Rancho. The Albatross and its crew were probably engaged in
some smuggling activities trying to avoid customs duties on the
cargo in the ship’s hold.
According to Claudia Salewske in her book Pieces of the Past:
A Story of Gilroy, Doak was weary of the life at sea and so he
left his shipmates, remaining in Monterey for a couple of years.
He was a ship’s carpenter and could make block and tackle gear
for the harbor trade. By 1818, he made his way to Mission San
Juan Bautista where he used his handyman skills to work at the
Mission in exchange for room and board. He is credited with
painting murals inside the chapel and the artwork for the fine
reredoes (the partitioned wood structure behind the altar that
holds six statues). Some say he was not the best painter, but the
colors in his work are still vibrant today.
Depending upon which history account you read it is possible
that John Gilroy and Thomas Doak may have arrived in South
County at about the same time. Gilroy, a Scotsman, had first
arrived in California in 1814 but may have lived in Alameda
County for a time before marrying into the Ortega family, and
then in Old Gilroy (known back then as San Isidro). We know
that Thomas Doak was born in 1787 in Boston but there is not
a record for his death and burial. After his baptism at San Juan
Bautista he was christened Felipe Santiago and soon thereafter
married Maria Lugarda Castro, the daughter of José Mariano de
Castro who was the grantee of the Las Ánimas Ranch.
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GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
The Rancho Las Ánimas land grant is the basis for much of
modern Gilroy. Castro was a soldier at the Monterey garrison.
In 1803 he applied for the land grant, which totaled more than
26,000 acres. The full name of the rancho is Las Ánimas o La
Poza de Carnedero and it was also sometimes known as La Brea
because there were natural tar pits oozing from the southern
hills of the grant. Castro died in 1828, with his wife, Josefa, and
eight children dividing the property, including a one-sixteenth
portion to Maria Lugarda and her husband Thomas Doak.
Thomas and Maria had four children. One of their daughters,
Anna Maria, married Nicodemus Gilroy, John Gilroy’s oldest son.
The conclusion of the Thomas Doak story has his wife selling
their share of the rancho to Henry Miller in the
late 1850’s.
Fast forwarding one hundred years, Henry Miller passed
away on October 14, 1916 at the age of 89. He was known as
the “Cattle King” and his amazing story of arriving as a young
man from Germany with only a few dollars in his pocket,
rapidly building up a cattle and sheep ranching business to
become one of the largest landowners ever in the United States,
has been re-told numerous times. At the time of his death in
1916, the Miller and Lux corporate partnership directly owned
1.4 million acres of cattle and farm land in California, Nevada
and Oregon. The company controlled nearly 22,000 square
miles. Miller’s estate was valued at nearly 40 million dollars.
The base of the Miller and Lux operations was the San
Joaquin Valley, and the Los Banos area in particular, it was
Bloomfield Ranch in Gilroy that Miller called his home. He was
especially fond of his family’s summer get-a-away camp at Mt.
Madonna where employees and town friends once gathered
to relax with a BBQ and escape the heat as the cool ocean
breezes swept over the hills. In his old age, Miller knew that
he had to cede control of his land empire but he felt there was
no one who could really manage it all. Probably with a lot of
apprehension, he turned over the reins to his son-in-law J. Leroy
Nickle who was married to Miller’s sole surviving child, Nellie.
JULY / AUGUST 2016
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